Both evil
Romney and supposedly lesser evil Obama are committed to more
war in general and committed to obliging Israel’s strident
insistence for a war with Iran.

All
American citizens should think of this as they cast their
ballots. Think of their own participation -- their enabling --
the greatest crime against humanity -- WAR.

There are
third party anti-war candidates but corporate media has been
rigorously thorough in omitting any mention of them and the
moral and humanitarian alternatives they offer the US citizenry.
Omitting mention of the legitimate options granted to us for our
precious votes. Corporate media has successfully convinced far
too many citizens they should not begin to consider foregoing
one or the other of the moneyed, legacy parties.

The TOTAL
blackout ensuring NO mention of these candidates and their
pro-people, pro-planet, pro-peace platforms shows just how
shameless a megaphone for corporate propaganda mainstream media
-- even supposedly “progressive” media -- has become. It also
shows how passive and easily seduced Americans are to such a
media.

David Swanson
writes about “less evil politics” and the horrifying stifling of
conscience too many Americans do oblige their leaders with, in
exchange for what they rationalize as a “lesser evil”
compromise. Swanson writes:

“We
often forget that war is the worst thing there is. Hence our
government's shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of
the torture and insourcing the "cleaner" approach of
assassination without torture. Hence, also, our common
fantasy that war can be used to solve a problem that is
somehow worse than war.”

snip

“In
fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to. A Lesser
Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the
same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser
amounts."

"That
might be a rational calculation within a polling place. But
living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and
cheering for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a
spectator sport, is nothing other than complicity in the
most hideous forms of cruelty and murder. That complicity
is insidious. Evil begins to look like something else,
because the Lesser Evilist, within his or her own mind,
comes to view the Lesser Evil forces as good, if not
glorious, if not saintly.”

Please
consider it. An upcoming war with Iran! Are we as citizens so
cynical or so burned out or so "learned helpless” we are not
horrified and outraged at this very real possibility? Too
disconnected from conscience not to consider rejecting its
perpetrators at the voting booth this November?

Netanyahu’s lit fuse bomb diagram presented to the 67th session
of the UN General Assembly last week was straight out of a Bugs
Bunny cartoon, though it was far from funny.

Bibi with
his handy dandy little red marker dramatically drew a line
across the illustration very near the lit fuse. Get it -- the
“red line”? A literal red line echoing all those “red line”
references of the
“engineering-consent-for-war”-politician-pundit-group-think-speak
now infiltrating the colluding national media.

“The
most ridiculous, however, was his use of a diagram aiming to
sew confusion in the general public. He claimed that Iran
had already achieved 70% of a nuclear military program,
despite Teheran having only uranium enriched at 20% for
civilian use while a military program requires uranium
enriched at 85% and upward."

Justin Raimondo
addresses the mendacity and manipulativeness of Netanyahu’s
speech:

“The
Israeli Prime Minister may have been addressing the UN
General Assembly, but he was really talking to the
Americans, whose fear and loathing of the perpetrators of
the 9/11 attacks can always be counted on to raise them to
new levels of hysteria. Outside that context, however,
equating the Iranians with Al Qaeda makes about as much
sense as likening the late unlamented Saddam Hussein to
Osama bin Laden – and, hey wait, didn’t we hear that
equation made endlessly in the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq? Yet this was not a time for subtlety from the Israeli
Prime Minister – the cartoon “bomb” ended all hope of that –
but for the crudest sort of propaganda, which is, of course,
war propaganda."

One of the
passages from Netanyahu’s speech:

“Today
a great battle is being waged between the modern and the
medieval. Israel stands proudly with the forces of
modernity. We protect the right of all our citizens, men and
women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all are equal
before the law.”

I suppose
Israel can be considered “modern” only in the sense that it is
capable of stockpiling 400 of its own technologically
sophisticated nuclear weapons.

As quoted
above, Netanyahu emphasized Israel protects "the right of all
citizens." In his speech, Netanyahu also declared that Israel
“cherishes peace.”

Raimondo
writes:

“Yes,
Israel protects the rights of all citizens – unless they’re
Palestinians who happen to own property coveted by the
“settlers,” in which case it doesn’t. And the key word here
is citizens: of course, the Palestinians in the occupied
territories are not citizens, but helots, with no rights,
and no protection from fanatical Jewish fundamentalists who
have launched hundreds of attacks on their homes, and sought
to displace them at every opportunity, with the active
complicity of the Israeli government."

David
Swanson discloses that Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at
the Washington Institute Of Near East Policy, recently joked
about “stepping up the pressure” for an Iran war using a covert,
black-ops-nudging or even "false flag" operation....

"Crisis initiation is really tough. ...

snip

We
could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian
submarines periodically go down. Someday one of them might
not come up. Who would know why? [LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE] .
. . . We are in the game of using covert means against the
Iranians. We could get nastier."

Swanson’s
response:

“This
is serious advocacy for manufacturing a "defensive" and
"humanitarian" war. This is not a war critic or a Yes Men
prankster. The position of most elected officials in
Washington, including the President, fits well with this.
That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease
doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is
not doing, namely building nuclear weapons. The goal at the
bottom of all of this is war. The purpose of the war is not
related to any of the excuses for it. The purpose is
something else entirely. But it's ugly, so it's easier not
to look."

Swanson
exposes the heart of darkness of our “deciders” over mass life
and death and their chronic and discordantly dissonant
CRAZYMAKING propaganda spewing forth at us 24/7 via THEIR not
our national media.

IRAN MUST CEASE DOING WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY NOT DOING!!!

And,

THE REAL PURPOSE OF THE US/ISRAEL et al. LAUNCHING A WAR
WITH IRAN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EXCUSES BEING MADE TO
DO IT.

How
insanely craven, dangerous and dooming!

Raimondo:

“The
ticking-bomb theme, which has been used to justify
everything from torture to the invasion of Iraq, permeates
Israeli propaganda in the US and was a cental[sic] theme of
Bibi’s speech. His message was clear: “the hour is getting
late.” We must act without giving too much thought to the
possible consequences. Don’t delay, don’t think, act now –
before the fraud is exposed, and we discover that – as in
the case of the Iraqis – those “weapons of mass destruction”
were just a figment of our easily manipulated collective
imagination.”

I see
Netanyahu as an auctioneer for the two desperately ambitious,
competing, soul-selling corporate/money/war political party
candidates, Romney and Obama, not to guarantee that a war with
Iran will occur, that is pretty much a given, but to bid against
each other vying for Netanyahu’s and Israel’s good will and
support over the terms of the timing, intensity, scope and
duration of such a war -- to commit to the extreme degrees they
will go. Yes, the bidding is now open ... or, rather, not open
but behind closed doors. Considering how Congresspeople from
both sides of the aisle knock each other over for an opportunity
to kiss Netanyahu’s ring on any occasion, there is all the more
likelihood of an Iran War sooner rather than later.

“Netanyahu sought to create the impression that he would be
willing to forgo an Israeli attack on Iran prior to the US
elections in exchange for a clear commitment from Washington
to launch a war next year."

It really
is a win/win scenario for Bibi and a lose/lose for humanity.
Both U.S. corporate party candidates are willing to mendaciously
justify, threaten and launch or at the least support a war with
Iran for and/or by Israel really for control of vast Middle East
resources -- and hang the lives of millions of human beings.

The
candidates and their corporatist overlords would prefer the
learned helpless US citizens not seriously focus on War
with Iran. They don’t want us, as we naively tried to do in
2008, to issue a serious, anti-war mandate to the candidates and
our corporate-captured government. Granted with five weeks to go
before the election such a passionate, eleventh hour mandate
would be a long-shot.

An
exhibition of mass citizen sensibility of morality and justice
would be bothersome and inconvenient to the sociopathic one
percent profits uber alles ruling class elites. It would
interrupt their cake-walk to establishing full-out or “lesser
evil” degrees of fascism in America.

As Barry
Grey points out, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is legal
within the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that
Israel has refused to sign and ignored, itself, defiantly
building over 400 nuclear warheads. Netanyahu’s ridiculous Bugs
Bunny cartoon version of a ticking bomb more accurately
represents the short-fuse, war-trigger-happy Netanyahu himself
and Israel’s tragic and destructive present administration.
Tragic, as is our own administration, since there is little hope
of US-war-criminality ending after the November election.

Grey
reminds us that long ago it was the UN that outlawed
pre-emptive-strike launching of wars as had been practiced by
the Nazi Third Reich in the 30s and 40s. These strikes were also
condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunals as war crimes. THEY ARE
ASSUREDLY BACK!!! And embraced by .... wait for it .... the
supposed world’s champion of democracy (cough, cough ... choke)
and the very government supposedly representing the people and
descendants of the people who were most viciously persecuted by
the Nazi Third Reich!

Both Obama
and Netanyahu brazenly threatened their intention for such a
pre-empive strike, this colossal war crime, in the very halls of
the UN that outlawed such behavior decades and decades ago.

The
international community -- I mean, the real international
community, not the one that Obama and Netanyahu pretend they
speak for -- know far better than we, the encouraged to be
ignorant citizenry, that there is more than political
saber-rattling going on right now. Grey contends the plans for
war with Iran are profoundly advanced. Grey also suggests that
we address the real threat of detonation of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons would not, of course, be used by a non-nuclear
Iran. He writes:

“There
is the real danger that the US or Israel would resort to
nuclear weapons. One newspaper report noted that Israel has
enlarged its submarine force, which is reportedly equipped
with nuclear weapons.”

Grey
exposes what is happening at this very moment in the Persian
Gulf.

“Meanwhile, the US, Israel and allied countries are carrying
out war exercises in the Persian Gulf in preparation for a
military attack. Last Thursday, naval forces from 25 nations
completed a 12-day mock battle in the largest-ever military
drill in the Gulf. Included in the armada with the US were
Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
others."

“This
month, the US and Israel will hold war games involving
simulated attacks against Iran and Syria. According to the
Israeli newspaper Maariv, the exercise will be named “dress
rehearsal.”

“According to various press reports, the US attack will be
anything but narrowly focused and brief. Israeli newspapers
in August reported that US National Security Adviser Thomas
Donilon had briefed Israel on US plans that began with an
initial launch of hundreds of cruise missiles to demolish
“Iran’s air defenses, intelligence bases and radar
stations.” This would be followed by a wave of B-52 bombers
that would “drop bunker-buster bombs on all of Iran’s
nuclear facilities.”"

“The
influential Washington DC military and intelligence think
tank Center for Strategic &
International Studies last month published a lengthy
analysis of the likely dimensions of a US attack on Iran.
The report listed eight missile bases and twelve industrial
and research facilities that would be bombed, in addition to
Iran’s five main nuclear sites.”

Grey
quotes a Washington Post column written by a DC
military/intelligence think tank called the Iran Project:

“...a
US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could quickly
escalate into a massive deployment of US ground troops and
spark a regional war “involving Syria, Hezbollah, the
Palestinians and other Arab states and terrorist groups.”

Grey
spells out the realpolitik.

“As in
the previous wars of the twenty-first century, the real war
aims are being concealed. Iran is being targeted not because
of its nuclear program, but because it has vast oil reserves
and is deemed the biggest regional obstacle to US hegemony
in the Middle East and Central Asia. The US is determined to
monopolize control of the world’s oil resources in order to
counter its global economic decline and weaken the position
of its main rivals, first and foremost China.”

Shouldn’t
war be a DEAL BREAKER for us citizens to no longer support
either corporate legacy party? Shouldn’t we have some memory of
the garden path we were led down to that war with Iraq?

Maybe that
is why Netanyahu drew a cartoon bomb and not a mushroom cloud.
Wouldn’t want to risk having us citizens connect any historical
and moral dots.

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